reject

I was 21 when I gave my life to Jesus Christ.  I've taken it back little by little since then.  There was a time I was so in awe of God's invincible, extravagant love and His Majesty, I lived for His whisperings and obeyed, little by little.  The Old Testament speaks of the Father's desire to call His children to Him.  It is also a metaphor for my walk with Him. 

Lost, torn, void of conscience outside of my own corrupt desires (Gen. 1.2), then found by God's grace (Gen. 1.3), established in His mercy and loving kindness, and purified in the fire of the Holy Spirit.  Then, bored like King David on his rooftop when he should have been fighting his enemies, I was lured away by the false beauty of temptation, sinned, and was plunged into the hell of trying to keep it concealed.  Little by little, I fall back into the lost, torn, void I was pulled out of.  The jagged history of Israel mirrors this, as well:  living in blessing, being tempted to be like all the other nations, little by little being pulled away, then being snatched into captivity by those they thought were friends.  In its deepest darkest despair they grasp the life-line God is throwing them, get hauled out of their troubles, only to fall into the cycle again and again.

We are human.  Just like Adam and Eve, God gives us the choice to choose the Tree of Life or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  We always seem to want to KNOW, and we have a habit of rejecting LIFE!  The history of the world can be summed up in this cycle:  Void-dark times.  Enlightenment-blessing of a better life.  Prosperity-flourishing empires (ushered in by war, but ultimately brought better quality of life).  Then, little by little...  and it all starts over again.  Why?  Why?  Why do we keep doing that???  Its insanity, foolishness.  As the writer of Ecclesiastes penned, "a chasing after the wind."

I have felt, at times, beyond God's grace.  I have done and said some stupid, stupid things, and the enemy of our souls, the devil, likes to plunge the knife of guilt in deep and then twist with smile of delight.  Its hard to fight back against his prosecutions.  He tells me, "You're no good."  "So what if you get up from this, you're only going to do it again."  "God can't fix stupid."  Ironically, we easily forget what we know he is a liar, and an accuser of those whom God has redeemed.  Even though we know this, the devil makes it FEEL so true.  Little by little I begin to pull away from God's grace.  I stop fighting my enemy.  I think because I stopped fighting, my enemy will leave me alone.  I even go so far sometimes as to become comfortable to the point of ignoring his schemes.  But the devil is still your enemy, and if you stop fighting him, you become a more terrible enemy than he is.  In a tired state-because I've stopped talking to God, I fall prey to temptation and into that ugly cycle-little by little.  

We need to repent.  We need to get back into the practice of rejecting ourselves and accepting Christ.  Our flesh is always against what God wants, so we cannot trust it.  We cannot trust our own reasonings.  God's Word says we don't even know our own hearts because it is so wayward!  We need to reject the idea that we've "made it" in faith, that we've arrived.  We need to stay off the roof when its time to be fighting.  

"I've never gone so far that I've forgotten my way home," is a line from an old popular song.  "The best things always bring me back again, over and over," is the succeeding line in that song.  The best things is what God has for us.  We have to reject ourselves in order to receive what He has.  Lost, confused, bound up in a bunch of mislead decisions?  Here's an old turn of phrase that needs to be revived:  "Grab hold of the horns of the altar and don't let go until something's different!"  Translation:  Repent and go back to practicing righteousness, and rejecting your self!